March 2025: The New York Times shares the story of Joseph Coates, who was fighting for his life against a rare disease when his family connected with Fajgenbaum.

“‘I gave up,” he said. ‘I just thought the end was inevitable.’

But Coates’s girlfriend, Tara Theobald, wasn’t ready to quit. So she sent an email begging for help to a doctor in Philadelphia named David Fajgenbaum, whom the couple met a year earlier at a rare disease summit.

By the next morning, Dr. Fajgenbaum had replied, suggesting an unconventional combination of chemotherapy, immunotherapy and steroids previously untested as a treatment for Coates’s disorder.”

Read the story by Kate Morgan

Photo: Hannah Yoon/New York Times

April 2025: Fajgenbaum details his vision for the future of health science and research in a TED interview on ReThinking with Adam Grant. 

“Physician-scientist David Fajgenbaum was dying from a rare disease that didn't have a cure — until he discovered a lifesaving drug that wasn't originally intended for his condition. In an astonishing talk, he shares how his near-death experience led him to cofound the nonprofit Every Cure, which is using AI to uncover hidden treatments in existing medicines in order to save lives. (This ambitious idea is part of The Audacious Project, TED’s initiative to inspire and fund global change.)”

Watch the video | Read interview with Adam Grant

Photo: TED

May 2025: Fajgenbaum is named as a TIME100 Most Influential People in Health of 2025. 

“In 2022, Fajgenbaum founded Every Cure, a nonprofit that uses AI to identify potential new uses for already-approved drugs. It works by comparing 4,000 drugs against 18,500 diseases, scoring each one on its likely efficacy. Once the team pinpoints promising uses, they either start testing them in the lab or connect with doctors eager to prescribe them. “People were literally dying of these diseases before, and now they can live with these solutions that were already there,” he says. In 2024, the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) awarded the group $48 million to further develop its AI platform.”

Read the article by Angela Haupt

Photo: TIME

September 2025: Fajgenbaum shares his story with CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta after being named a “Champion for Change” in his work for advancing health care. 

“David Fajgenbaum had almost died five times. But he lived, after finding a treatment for his disease in an already approved drug. Now he’s pioneering that method to find treatments for other rare diseases.”

Watch the video

Photo: CNN